As 3D data is getting more popular, techniques for retrieving a particular 3D model are necessary. We want to recognize a 3D model from a single photograph; as any user can easily get an image of a model he/she would like to find, requesting by an image is indeed simple and natural. However, a 2D intensity image is relative to viewpoint, texture and lighting condition and thus matching with a 3D geometric model is very challenging. This paper proposes a first step towards matching a 2D image to models, based on features repeatable in 2D images and in depth images (generated from 3D models); we show their independence to textures and lighting. Then, the detected features are matched to recognize 3D models by combining HOG (Histogram Of Gradients) descriptors and repeatability scores. The proposed methods reaches a recognition rate of 72% among 12 3D objects categories, and outperforms classical feature detection techniques for recognizing 3D models using a single image.